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This article presents the Spanish adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley &
Lang, 1999). The norms are based on 720 participants assessments of the translation into Spanish of the 1,034
words included in the ANEW. The evaluations were done in the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance
using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Apart from these dimensions, five objective (number of letters,
number of syllables, grammatical class, frequency and number of orthographic neighbors) and three subjective
(familiarity, concreteness and imageability) psycholinguistic indexes are included. The Spanish adaptation of
ANEW can be downloaded at www.psychonomic.org.
The Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999a) provide a set of normative evaluative
ratings for 1034 words in the English language. The ANEW
complements previous work developed by the Center for
Emotion and Attention (CSEA, University of Florida), such
as the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS;
Bradley & Lang, 1999b) and the International Affective
Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999).
The theoretical position assumed in these works falls
inside the framework of the dimensional perspective of
emotions (e.g., Bradley, 1994; Lang, 1995; Lang, Dhillon,
& Dong, 1995). This perspective, already defended by
Wundt (1896), is based on work by Osgood (Osgood,
Suci, & Tanenbaum, 1957) and conceptualizes emotion
as having three basic underlying dimensions along which
the entire range of human emotions can be arranged. The
two primary dimensions are valence (which ranges from
pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (which ranges from
calm to excited). The third dimension, not as often mentioned because of its lesser consistency, is dominance or
control (ranging from in control to out of control).
To evaluate a stimulus in these three dimensions, Lang
(1980) developed a nonverbal pictographic measure: the
Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; see Figure1). In the
valence dimension, SAM ranges from pleasant (represented by a happy figure) to unpleasant (represented by
a frowning figure). In the arousal dimension, the SAM
ranges from excited (represented by a figure with
overtly open eyes) to calm (represented by a sleepy figure). Lastly, the dominance dimension ranges from out
of control (represented by a huge figure) to in control
(represented by a tiny figure).
These normalized stimuli databases (i.e., IADS, IAPS,
and ANEW) are a powerful work tool in investigation, as
they make the replication of results and scientific commu-
J. Redondo, jredondo@usc.es
600
Figure1. Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Self-evaluation scales for the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance.
Table1
Linear Correlations Between American and
Spanish Ratings in the Three Affective Dimensions
All Subjects
Valence
.916
Arousal
.746
Dominance
.720
Notep, .001 in all cases.
Females
.867
.610
.539
Males
.920
.723
.721
Table2
Mean Values of the Spanish and American Populations Ratings,
by All Subjects and by Females and Males Separately, in the
Three Affective Dimensions
All Subjects
Females
Males
Dimension
Spain
USA
Spain
USA
Spain
USA
Valence
4.74
5.15
4.74
5.08
4.74
5.24
Arousal
5.52
5.12
5.54
5.16
5.49
5.07
Dominance
4.67
5.00
4.67
4.92
4.67
5.12
Notep, .001 in all the SpainUSA comparisons in each dimension.
Figure2. Distribution of the mean values (men and women) corresponding to the
ratings of the 1,034 words in the dimensions of valence and arousal.
in terms of a higher emotional reactivity in Spanish subjects. Lastly, the American subjects obtained higher values
than the Spanish ones in the dominance dimension. As before, this result was also obtained with images (IAPS) by
Molt etal., suggesting that Americans possess a higher
perception of control relative to affective stimuli, be they
words or images.
We were also interested in looking for differences which
are due to gender in the assessments of the words obtained
in our normative study. The distribution of assessments in
the affective space (see Figure2) for both men and women
is very similar. Thus, the quadratic correlation between
valence and arousal was R5 .526, p, .000, for females,
and R5 .443, p, .000, for males. These values were
lower than those obtained in the Spanish adaptation of
the IAPS (.65 and .61 for women and men, respectively).
No statistically significant differences were found in the
mean ratings by men and women in none of the three dimensions (Table3).
Pearsons correlation between the ratings of men and
women was R5 .973 for valence, R5 .843 for arousal,
and R5 .840 for dominance ( p, .000 in all three cases).
Furthermore, the ranges of ratings for men and women
did not differ considerably. These results are different to
those obtained from the study by Molt and his coworkers
using IAPS. Thus, on the one hand these authors found
that the average arousal and dominance was significantly
higher for women than for men. On the other hand, women
used a higher range of values than men in all dimensions.
Therefore, in the Spanish population the femalemale differences found in the assessments of the IAPS images disappear when participants rate words from the ANEW.
To sum up, our work has been developed under the
framework of the dimensional perspective of emotion,
from which it is assumed that emotion can be characterized as having, at least, two orthogonal dimensions: valence and arousal. In order to measure and control these
M
4.74
5.54
4.67
Females
SD
Range
2.16
7.51
1.02
5.87
1.09
5.79
M
4.74
5.49
4.67
Males
SD
2.11
1.05
1.07
Range
7.65
5.70
6.10
ARCHIVED MATERIALS
The following materials associated with this article may be accessed
through the Psychonomic Societys Norms, Stimuli, and Data archive,
www.psychonomic.org/archive/.
To access these files, search the archive for this article using the journal (Behavior Research Methods), the first authors name (Redondo),
and the publication year (2007).
File: Redondo-BRM-2007.zip
Description: The compressed archive file contains two files:
RedondoEtAl(2007).txt, containing the Spanish adaptation of ANEW
(Affective Norms for English Words).
RedondoEtAl(2007).xls, containing the same information in Excel
spreadsheet format.
Authors e-mail address: j.redondo@usc.es.
(Manuscript received June 15, 2006;
accepted for publication July 24, 2006.)